Gluten-free to Grain-free?

So a couple posts ago, I mentioned I have decided to go grain-free and therefore will not be going out to "gluten-free restaurants" any more to do reviews. My decision to change my diet further largely came from getting very sick this summer and not being able to get better with all the medications doctors were throwing at me. Possible diagnosis ranged from pneumonia to GERD to asthma to vocal chord dysfunction. All I know is I was very sick, and it took me months to recover. Thank you, thank you to my naturopaths who helped me get back on my feet by helping me with acupuncture, diet change, and the reassurance that my own body could heal itself.

During my illness, I really started to question what I was eating. First I started to really look into restaurants I had been dining at and found that even ones I had said were great gluten-free places on my blog really weren't if you looked at the fine print. In most cases, the restaurant's idea of gluten-free was definitely not mine. So I decided to go restaurant-free to be gluten-free.

Next, I went back to the center of research-books and the internet, and I found www.glutenfreesociety.org and Dr. Osborne which really made me question what I had previously learned about celiac disease and gluten sensitivity. I found out that all grains have gluten and that in several research studies people with celiac disease react to several grains, not just those listed by the Celiac Sprue Association and Celiac Disease Foundation, who are supposed to be the most up-to-date. I had no idea. All I had heard previously was that a very small number reacted adversely to oats. Gluten is a protein found in all grains, not just wheat, barley, rye, and the few others those with celiac are supposed to avoid. Yet, reactions to wheat gluten are pretty much the only ones tested. Right now you probably have lots of questions; I know I did. And the best answers can be found in the following podcast link by Dr. Osborne: Gluten Sensitivity: What is It?

Shortly after finding the above podcast, I had a patient with Chron's disease, which is chronic inflammation of the digestive track, and another gut disease with some similarities to celiac disease. We got on the topic of what dietary changes we had made because of our diseases, and I was excited to find that he too was looking into a grain-free diet as Dr. Osborne suggests, though more specifically his inspiration for dietary changes had come from a book called Breaking the Vicious Cycle by Elaine Gottschall. This book discussed the Specific Carbohydrate Diet which was one of the earliest and most successful diets in treating celiac disease. So why hadn't I heard of it before? The book does a great job of answering these questions and more, and I highly suggest you buy it or at least look at the website which I have linked above to do more research yourself. It does a much better job of providing information than I could on this blog.

So after looking at these two suggestions, my final conclusion, after playing around with both diets and doing my own research on healthy foods, was to combine my information into the following diet:
1) No more eating out.
2) No more grains.
3) Limit sugar-primarily only honey and maple syrup if I had any.
4) No processed foods-ingredients had to be identifiable-so if it said walnut, I better see a walnut in it.
5) Make pretty much everything from scratch.
6) All organic food.
7) As local a possible.
8) Grass-fed meat, dairy, egg, and poultry products as much as possible.
9) Raw dairy products as much as possible.

Now, I am not going to lie. I cheated at times. Peer pressure is the worst when you want to go out with friends and eat and do everything they do too, but I would say 90% of the time I stuck to it. The results have been great. I have lost weight, feel more energetic, am no longer sick and best of all my lab results are better. So heres the details.

My IGG antibody level, which along with IGA antibody is used to determine if a patient has celiac disease through a blood test, even after being on the gluten-free diet strictly for two years and trials of not eating out at restaurants previously has never been lower than 33. I would test my antibodies from time to time after my diagnosis to see if diet had brought down my levels. My IGG level dropped from the 70's initially, but never got any lower than 33. My IGA level has always been normal, which is why I could not have a confirmed diagnosis of celiac disease by blood test and had to later have a biopsy. My doctor suggested in 2005 that if the IGG level was still in the 30's after a couple years on the diet, it probably would not improve, and I most likely had some permanent damage from the disease that kept it still high. So I stopped testing at that point, deciding it was not worth the cost to track my progress. Out of curiosity, I decided to retest these antibodies again after being on my new nine rules diet for several months and to my amazement, my IGG level was at a 2, the lowest it has been since diagnosis and within normal range which is 0-19. This was exciting news.

Also, my Ferritin, Vitamin B12, and Vitamin D (commonly low in patients with celiac disease and for which I have needed supplements) were all greatly improved which told me my digestion of the supplements I was taking was improving.
Ferritin previously at 26 was now 73 (normal 10-291)
Vitamin B12 previously at 320 was now 451 (normal 211-911)
Vitamin D previously at 33.1 was now 39.2  (normal 4.8-52.8)

To me this is confirmation that Dr. Osborne and Elaine Gottschall were on the right track although years apart. So here I am on a grain-free diet hoping to share the wonderful information these two have given me with you. I would say my blog will probably be taking on a different look as I begin my new journey, and I hope people will find it helpful enough to continue reading. I have found all the sources on the internet so helpful for the improvement of my health and hope this will just add to the resources out there.